# Blade and Sorcery Update 1.0.4 released

- Product: Blade and Sorcery (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/blade-and-sorcery)
- Vendor: WarpFrog
- Date: 2024-09-24
- Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/629730/view/4592070813185214105
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/blade-and-sorcery/releases/2024-09-24-update-1.0.4-released

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- **fixed** — Restored 1v1 AI to U11 levels with responsive engagement and aggressive behavior
- **fixed** — Re-enabled AI ability to chain attacks and perform parry and riposte
- **fixed** — Fixed animations that were not triggering such as the straight stab
- **fixed** — Eliminated face hugging enemy behavior in combat
- **fixed** — Improved rangefinding for enemies with small weapons like hatchets and clubs
- **fixed** — Fixed longsword AI animation jank and rangefinding issues by adjusting animation speeds

Hello mates, Baron here! Patch 1.0.4 is now available and this is a large bugfix patch, but perhaps more compelling for you guys is that it contains a bunch of long awaited AI improvements.

One of the roughest consequences of having an EA development over 5 years and going from just KospY as a dev to having a full studio of devs is the amount of spaghetti code that can occur! What is meant by spaghetti code is that the code is "messy" with many dependencies, making the threat of regression rampant.
It's like having a big bunch of knotted strings where if you want to pull one you risk it pulling on another by accident, and this is what happens when we say regression; you change one piece of seemingly innocuous code in one place, and it causes a ripple effect elsewhere to create some unexpected consequence, and you had no defense against it because you can't possibly QA the entirety of every little thing in the game every single update.

This is what happened to us with our AI in 1.0 release - some of the AI behaviors were weird, buggy, or flat out missing! The state of AI was less obvious to us because there was an overwhelming amount of other stuff to focus on in 1.0, and we hadn't been expecting AI to degrade (ie, you are never expecting regression until it happens).
We had been in 1.0 dev mode for so long that the AI slowly degrading was like watching a plant grow for us, versus for you guys who came straight from U12 to 1.0 and could do a direct comparison. It really wasn't until post release and some players saying "didn't the AI used to behave XYZ way?" that made us realize how the AI had gotten lobotomized.

Long story short, that brings us to now and we have been working on repairing this! With this patch, we believe we finally have the AI back to where it was right after Animation Overhaul in U11. ːlunar2019piginablanketː

This should be a major improvement if you have been playing 1.0, though as always with the AI, it's far from perfect. There is no real solution for "dream AI", both because on a technical level a VR full physics simulation will always have a risk of strange things or jank that a non-physics simulation does not, and because of what I was mentioning about about regression risk in our game framework Thunder Road, which makes it slow as hell and an absolute nightmare to work on.

This is one of the reasons we are dying to move to Thunder Road 2 which will be our new game framework for the next game; we can learn from the rookie mistakes made in Blade & Sorcery development and create something better if we are able to start from scratch.

Anyway, this is just some background information I wanted to share with you guys to give context, but let's actually get into the AI fixes in this patch!

**NOTE: If you were playing with AI mods now or at any point since 1.0 release, it is highly recommended you remove the mods and delete your save / start a new character save.**

If you do not do this, the AI mods are likely gonna conflict with this patch and cause derpy behavior or even break things. This includes if you had an AI mod but didn't delete your save - the AI mod can create weird behaviors in your save even when the mod is removed. If you report bugs and then it is discovered you had AI mods installed or were using a corrupt modded save...

Here is what is improved in the AI:

##### 1v1 improvements, parry and riposte restored

1v1 AI is now working really well and restored back to U11 levels. ːpraisesunː

The AI should be responsive and not just stand there; now they should actually engage you aggressively.

The AI can chain attacks like they used to be able to, and can perform a parry and riposte.

Some animations that were not triggering are now working, such as the straight stab.

A huge improvement is no more face hugging enemy! This was such a pain in the ːpontius_angryː and ruiner of combat, so hopefully you will not be experiencing this anymore.

Although rangefinding was majorly improved there is

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